Still true to their school

Greene High School grads gather monthly 56 years later.

Greene High School grads gather monthly 56 years later.

March 31, 2006|JUDY BRADFORD Tribune Correspondent

"She taught me how to skip class," says one woman, pointing across the table. "I remember running to the bathroom and hiding on top of the toilet stool," says another. "The teacher would want us to 'fess up to something and we'd all run." These are the memories of a group of women, all 74 years old and all 1950 graduates of the former Greene High School in Greene Township. Many of them went to Greene for their primary and middle-school years, too, because Greene was a K-12 township school before it became part of the South Bend school system. Ten or 12 women gather monthly for lunch at the Paramount Restaurant and order the stir fry. But back in 1950, the place was Toasty's, and they would come for foot-long hot dogs, sodas and malts. They would drive in their fathers' Studebakers or their boyfriends' Chevies, the hot car of the time. They went to movies at one of three downtown cinemas, or rollerskating at Playland or "The Box" in Mishawaka. They were country kids, and before they could drive, they walked or biked -- sometimes several miles just to see friends. There were hayrides -- "with a tractor, not a horse and buggy" -- and fan buses to away basketball games. They didn't have televisions in their homes yet. They had to be creative and make their own fun. "We had this club called OFM, which stood for Out For Men," says Ruth Zentz Wilhelm. "Until the boys found out about it and wanted to join. Then it had to be OFE, or Out for Enjoyment." The entire class, which graduated 32 women and men, meets every two years for a big reunion. But this monthly lunch bunch is strictly for women. They stick together, and try to get together at Paramount once every month. And when someone's not feeling well, the others pitch in and help. Many of them still live in Greene Township, and sent their children and grand-children to Greene, which became a K-8 school after 1966 and then later an elementary school. (It's now an intermediate center for grades 5-8.) They know teachers have a hard job now, but they laugh and joke about how "long-suffering" the Greene teachers were back then, putting up with the students' antics. "But it was all good," comments Margaret Tetzlaff Nimtz. "There was nothing like it. We just had a great time -- and we graduated!"